p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } After opening an office in Milan, the Swiss management firm Julius Baer has opened another in Rome, at via Ludovisi 35. The new investment advising and wealth management location is directed by Andrea Torlonia, who joins from Duemme SGR (Banca Esperia), where he was head of management for institutional clients. The announcement of the new opening was made on 9 December in Milan by Julius Baer SIM.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Irish government has several ideas to reduce aversion to its government debt, Agefi reports. Domestic private pension funds may become major buyers of newly-issued bonds due to a proposed reform in the 2011 budget unveiled last Tuesday. In exchange for buying government bonds with long maturities, pension funds would be allowed to value their liabilities on the basis of high Irish interest rates.

Skandia Investment Group (SIG) a annoncé qu’il mettait fin à un mandat de 8 millions de livres confié à Ben Wallace de Gartmore au sein du fonds UK Strategic Best Ideas (62 millions de livres) en raison de performances décevantes.Le mandat a certes surperformé l’indice FTSE All Share de 10 points de pourcentage depuis son lancement il y a trois ans, mais fait moins bien que bon nombre d’autres gérants.Le mandat sera distribué entre les différents gérants du fonds, en autres Mark Lyttleton de BlackRock, Paul Casson de Henderson, Tim Steer d’Artemis et Julius Lipner d’Aviva Investors.

Le London Stock Exchange a annoncé le 8 décembre avoir admis à la négociation le HSBC MSCI Turkey ETF disponible en parts libellées en dollars ou en livres sterling. Ce fonds d’actions de droit irlandais (IE00B5BRQB73), qui pratique la réplication physique, est chargé à 0,60 %. C’est le douzième ETF de HSBC en Europe.

Le fonds Mandarine Capital Solidaire a effectué trois nouveaux investissements dans des organismes solidaires. Il s’agit du Réseau Cocagne, qui représente 5,6% de son portefeuille, Bretagne Capital Solidaire (6,4 % du portefeuille) et la SIFA (Société d’Investissement France Active), qui pèse 7,3 % du fonds, annonce un communiqué de Mandarine Gestion. Mandarine Capital Solidaire est un FCPR dont le portefeuille est composé d’au moins 40% de titres non cotés émis par des organismes solidaires.

Les entreprises accompagnées par les acteurs français du capital investissement «ont démontre leur résistance à un environnement particulièrement compliqué», selon l'édition 2010 de l'étude réalisée par l’Association française du capital-investissement (Afic) et Ernst & Young auprès de 1.658 entreprises, dont 1.219 PME.Les entreprises concernées sont parvenues à limiter la baisse de leur chiffre d’affaires et de leurs effectifs. L’étude enregistre un fléchissement du chiffre d’affaires France (-5,9 % entre 2008 et 2009) ainsi qu’un recul modéré des effectifs France (-1,8 %). Ces résultats sont à comparer avec la baisse du chiffre d’affaires des entreprises du CAC 40 (-6,8 %) sur la même période. Le recul des effectifs a également été plus marqué pour les entreprises du CAC 40 (-2,8 %) et pour l’ensemble des entreprises du secteur privé français (-2,0 %).Ces résultats montrent cependant des évolutions contrastées en fonction du stade de développement, de la taille ou du secteur des entreprises. Les entreprises en phase de capital-développement ont particulièrement bien résisté à l’environnement difficile. Les effectifs sont ainsi restés stables (-0,2 %) alors que le chiffre d’affaires n’a baissé que de 2,6 %. Les entreprises en phase de transmission ont enregistré un recul de 9,2 % du chiffre d’affaires mais ont su limiter la baisse de leurs effectifs à 2,9 %.Les entreprises en phase de création/post création, plus sensibles à la crise, ont ajusté leurs charges rapidement; les effectifs ont ainsi reculé de 8 % entre 2008 et 2009 alors que le chiffre d’affaires confirmait une baisse de 7,1 %.L’analyse approfondie des résultats souligne par ailleurs que, parmi les 100 premières entreprises classées par chiffre d’affaires, près de 60 % de la baisse des effectifs et 50 % du recul du chiffre d’affaires est imputable aux 25 entreprises cotées ayant répondu à l’étude. Les 75 autres entreprises du Top 100 ont par contre démontré une belle résistance à la crise. En conservant des effectifs stables (+0,2 %), ces entreprises préparent ainsi la sortie de crise.Si le secteur de la construction apparait comme le plus pénalisé par l’environnement économique, les secteurs du médical et des biotechnologies ainsi que l’informatique bénéficient de meilleurs résultats. Le secteur de l’énergie affiche même une progression des effectifs (+6,3 %) et du chiffre d’affaires (+1,3 %).Selon Hervé Schricke, président de l’Afic, «les investisseurs ont démontré leur rôle d’accompagnement dans la durée en soutenant les entreprises de leurs portefeuilles. Ils ont ainsi réinjecté des fonds propres quand celles-ci en ont eu besoin: pas moins de 64 % des investissements de l’année 2009 ont ainsi été des réinvestissements. L’étude qui vient d’être publiée souligne par ailleurs le besoin de stabilité du financement de l’innovation, le cycle de développement pouvant être affecté plus violemment par des conjonctures défavorables ».

Selon un avis financier paru dans la Tribune du 8.12.2010, la société de gestion financière Van Eyck annonce la nomination de Christophe Bonnasse au poste de directeur associé. Il était auparavant directeur de l'équipe en charge du développement des associations et des fondations chez Quilvest Banque Privée.

Après avoir ouvert un bureau à Milan, le suisse Julius Baer en a ouvert un autre à Rome, via Ludovisi 35. La nouvelle antenne de conseil en investissement et de gestion de fortune est dirigée par Andrea Torlonia, qui vient de Duemme SGR (Banca Esperia), où il dirigeait la gestion pour le compte de clients institutionnels. L’annonce de cette nouvelle ouverture a été faite le 9 décembre à Milan par Julius Baer SIM.

Le système de comptabilité de fonds SimCorp Dimension est désormais opérationnel chez Oberbank, dont le siège est situé à Linz (Land de Haute-Autriche), indique le danois SimCorp le 8 décembre. Dimension sert de plateforme stratégique de gestion d’investissement, pour la banque de dépôts, l’administration de fonds, l’IFRS et la conformité. L’utilisation de la précédente plateforme, Sungard V3, a été totalement abandonnée.Le reporting légal a également été optimisé. Le reporting de fin d’année et les rapports de solvabilité sont générés directement par SimCorp Dimension. Les données de fonds nécessaires au reporting à la Banque centrale autrichienne (ÖNB) sont soumises à l’autorité de contrôle bancaire autrichien (OeKB) via l’interface intégrée FundsXML.

Le secteur des hedge funds a enregistré une collecte nette de 16 milliards de dollars au mois d’octobre, selon les statistiques publiées par Trim Tabs Investment Research et BarclayHedge. Il s’agit du quatrième mois consécutif de collecte nette, avec un montant jamais vu depuis novembre 2009.Les hedge funds ont aussi enregistré une performance de 1,95% en octobre et de 7,10% pour les quatre mois suivant la glissade de mai-juin.Les fonds de distressed securities ont notamment drainé 3,8 milliards de dollars, soit 3,3% des actifs, en octobre, alors que les fonds dédiés aux marchés émergents ont attiré 2,2 milliards de dollars.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Irving Picard, the legally-appointed trustee for the businesses of Bernard Madoff, on 7 December filed another lawsuit against UBS, seeking USD555m. The Swiss group responded on 8 December in a statement, calling the trustee’s position incomprehensible and baseless. The trustee had already filed a first legal action against UBS and Access International Advisors LLC on 24 November (see Newsmanagers of 25 November 2010), seeking USD2bn for what he claims is their presumed implication in the Ponzi scheme operated by Madoff. UBS is accused of setting up feeder funds through which clients’ money was piped to the investment vehicle operated by the former Nasdaq president. The legally-appointed trustee has also filed suits against JPMorgan Chase & Co and HSBC, seeking USD6.4bn and USD9bn, respectively. The previous day, Picard filed suits against BNP Paribas, Legacy Capital and Khronos Capital Research, among others, according to documents submitted to the US courts.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } “Our team of 17 people, including 7 analysts and 7 fund managers, in addition to 6 corporate governance specialists, manages funds and mandates worth about GBP4bn. This could give you an inaccurate idea of the weight that we might pull at Aviva Investors, which has GBP250bn in assets overall.” Steve Waygood, head of sustainable development and engagement, tells Newsmanagers that the influence of the SRI team is proportionately far higher than its assets under management: “for example, when we decide to vote against a resolution at a general shareholders’ meeting, I vote for all of Aviva Investors. But, of course, this never happens at the companies where our SRI funds invest, since those companies [where we have to vote against resolutions] are a priori excluded from our portfolios.”Aviva Investors, which publishes details of its votes at general shareholders’ meetings, but not the motivations for those votes, on 30 September adopted the Stewardship Code, which is the equivalent for British institutional investors of the governance code for publicly-traded businesses. The text, a “comply or explain” type document from the self-regulating body Financial Reporting Council (FRC), comes into force in 2011, and is on a strictly voluntary basis, with no legal obligation. “It is a very good initiative, whether or not we achieve the necessary critical mass among institutional investors and their management firms. But it has two major deficiencies, which are related. On the one hand, it has no single document which would allow comparisons, and on the other, it does not allow for formal feedback on the part of clients, who are confronted with a multitude of disparate documents at various operators.”

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Australian firm Macquarie will launch a fourth European fund with several billion euros in assets to invest in infrastructure in a few months, Reuters reports. According to a source cited by the agency, “The group will raise a first round of capital privately, and will announce the creation of the fund once this round is raised, most likely in spring.”

Amundi will in a few months launch ETFs in the United Kingdom, Olivier Paquier, ETF product specialist at Amundi, announced at the Edhec-Risk Instituional Days 2010 conference. The firm, which now has a range of about 100 ETFs, is thus far present in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Benelux. Now, “we are looking at what other markets we might enter in order to go global,” says Paquier. The UK is a part of this strategy.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The socially responsible investment specialist firm SAM on 8 December announced that it has appointed Michael Baldinger as CEO from 1 January 2011. Since last year, Baldinger had been head for Global Clients & Marketing and a member of the executive board at SAM. While serving in his new role, he will also continue with his previous responsibilities until a successor can be appointed.Baldinger succeeds Sander van Eijkern, who left the firm in February due to differences of opinion over strategy.The new CEO will be responsible for strategy and development of SAM’s activities, and will explore a potential deepening of the firm’s cooperation with its parent company, Robeco.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Groupe BCV (Swiss cantonal bank of Vaud) on 8 December announced that it has acquired the Banque Franck Galland & Cie S.A. for an undisclosed amount from the Groupe Johnson Financial, and merged it with the Banque Piguet & Cie S.A., an affiliate of the BCV group. The new entity, Banque Piguet Galland & Cie S.A., will be primarily oriented to the Swiss market, and will be among the largest actors in private banking in French-speaking Switzerland. With assets under management of about GHF8bn, the new Banque Piguet Galland & Cie S.A. will be among the foremost actors in wealth management in French-speaking Switzerland. It will offer proximity services to high net worth clients in French-speaking Switzerland, with the objective of significantly increasing its assets under management in the mid-term. The Banque Piguet Galland & Cie S.A. will be present in Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano, Neuchâtel, Nyon and Yverdon-les-Bains. Its administrative offices will be located in Geneva and Yverdon-les-Bains, where its headquarters will also be located. The clients of the two merged partners will retain their managers and benefit from extended services (increased competence in the area of financial and credit analysis).

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In November, assets in US pension funds fell less rapidly than liabilities, resulting in an average coverage rate of 80.5%, according to statistics from BNY Mellon Asset Management. This represents a slight improvement compared with October, when the coverage ratio averaged 80.3%.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The fund accounting system SimCorp Dimension is now operational at Oberbank, whose headquarters are located in Linz (Upper Austria district), the Danish firm SimCorp announced on 8 December. Dimension is the strategic platform for investment management for savings banks, fund administration, AFRS and compliance. Use of the previous platform, Sungard V3, has been completely discontinued. Legal reporting has also been optimised. End-of-year reporting and solvency reports are generated directly by SimCorp Dimension. The necessary fund data for reporting to the Austrian central bank (ÖNB) are submitted to the Austrian banking control authority (OeKB) via the integrated FundsXML interface.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } According to a report by the consultant DTZ for third quarter, foreign investment funds have bought more than 56% of the real estate properties sold in Spain this year, Cotizalia reports. This percentage remains similar to that observed in 2008 and 2009. Many foreign institutional funds are planning to invest EUR100m each in Spain. At the end of third quarter 2010, the volume of sales on the Spanish tertiary market represented EUR1.18bn, compared with EUR489m in all of 2009.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Asian Investor reports that Northern Trust Global Investments, the asset management unit of the US group Northern Trust, has recruited Chen Ee-Fang as director of sales in Singapore, a newly-created position. Chen, who will concentrate her efforts on the development of activities in south-east Asia, previously worked at Martin Currie as director of development for Asia.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On Wednesday, Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee for Bernard L. Madoff Securities, filed a new round of lawsuits, seeking money from five grandchildren of Madoff, and seeking to recuperate USD1.4bn from seven banks, the Wall Street Journal reports. He accuses Citibank, Natixis, Fortis Prime Fund Solutions Bank (Ireland), ABN Amro Bank, BBVA, Nomura Bank International and Merrill Lynch International of failing to notice signs of fraud. He is also suing the administrators for Madoff in the United Kingdom for USD80m. Picard is under pressure to claw back money, as Federal law allows him to file lawsuits only until Saturday, the anniversary of Madoff’s arrest.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Singapore sovereign fund GIC, China Investment Corporation (CIC) and the investment board of Abu Dhabi (ADIC) have participated in a capital increase operation at the Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, Finance Asia reports. A consortium of international investors, including GIC, CIC, a Canadian pension fund, ADIC and the private equity investment group JC Flowers, made major contributions to the USD1.8bn capital increase, representing an 18.65% stake. BTG Pactual will use the proceeds from the operation to develop its core professions: investment banking, asset management and wealth management.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Businesses accompanied by French private equity actors “have shown resistance to a particularly complicated environment,” according to the 2010 edition of a study undertaken by the French private equity association AFIC and Ernst & Young, which surveyed 1,658 businesses, 1,219 of them SMBs. The businesses concerned managed to limit losses of revenues and staff. The study shows a decline in French earnings (-5.9% between 2008 and 2009), well as a moderate decline in French staff (-1.8%). These results compare with a fall in earnings for businesses of the CAC 40 (-6.8%) in the same period. The decline in staff was also more markets for businesses of the CAC 40 (-2.8%) and for all businesses of the French private sector (-2.0%). These results, however, reveal contrasted developments depending on the stage of development, size and sector of the businesses concerned. Businesses in a venture capital phase held out particularly well in the difficult environment of this period. Staff also remained stable (-0.2%), while earnings fell by only 2.6%. Businesses in a transmission phase lost 9.2% of earnings, but limited staff reductions to 2.9%. Businesses in a creation or post-creation phase, which were more sensitive to the crisis, adjusted their costs rapidly: staff fell by 8% between 2008 and 2009, while earnings fell by 7.1%. A detailed analysis of results, however, finds that among the 100 largest businesses ranked by revenues, nearly 60% of layoffs and 50% of decline in earnings were at the 25 publicly traded businesses which responded to the survey. The other 75 businesses in the top 100, however, held out well through the crisis. While retaining stable staff levels (+0.2%), these businesses prepared for their exit from the crisis. Though the construction sector appears to be the hardest-hit by the economic environment, the medical and biotech sectors, as well as IT, show the best results. The energy sector has even seen an increase in staff (+6.3%) and earnings (+1.3%). Hervé Schricke, president of AFIC, says “investors have shown their role as long-term companions, supporting businesses in their portfolios. They have reinjected their own equity when the businesses needed it: no less than 64% of investments in 2009 were reinvestments. The recently-published study also reveals a need for stable financing for innovation, as the development cycle may be affected more violently by unfavourable conjunctures.”

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The alternative management group Carlyle has announced that it has acquired a 55% stake in the hedge fund Claren Road Asset Management, for an undisclosed amount. Claren Road Asset Management has USD4.5bn in assets under management. The transaction includes a cash payment, a stake in Carlyle and complementary payments based on performance.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The London Stock Exchange on 8 December announced that it has admitted the HSBC MSCI Turkey ETF fund, available in shares denominated in US dollars or pounds Sterling, to trading. The Irish-registered equities fund (IE00B5BRQB73), which relies on physical replication, charges 0.60%. It is the twelfth ETF from HSBC in Europe.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } A survey of about 400 German professional investors on their allocations to hedge funds finds that the usage rates vary widely among these vehicles, depending on the category of subscribers they serve. The 74-page study finds that among the 30 family offices surveyed by Man Investments and its distributor for Germany and Austria, apano GmbH, 53.3% already have hedge funds in their portfolios. For the 102 wholesale managers (funds of funds, wealth managers, private bankers and investment consultants), the percentage who use hedge funds falls to 26%. It comes to 21% for the 159 IFAs surveyed, and slightly under 11% for investments or securities advisers at banks. The authors of the study conclude that the major lesson of the survey is that the propensity of German institutional investors to invest depends on their degree of familiarity with and knowledge of hedge funds, as well as on the experience that they have had with products of this type. This explains the fact that the penetration rate is lowest among financial advisers at banks, who are considered insufficiently informed to be able to actively promote products of this type, and who are also the population for whom the risk involved in hedge funds appears to be highest. The fact that hedge funds are not more widely used in the portfolios of family offices and wholesalers, however, is attributed to product offerings which are still not sufficiently attractive. These two categories, however, invest considerably in UCITS III funds, while IFAs and bank advisers prefer funds of funds.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has announced that it is cancelling a mandate for GBP8m to Ben Wallace at Gartmore, from the UK Strategic Best Ideas fund (GBP62m), due to disappointing performance. The mandate did outperform the FTSE All Share by 10% since its launch three years ago, but it has performed less well than those in the hands of other managers. The mandate will be distributed amongst the other managers for the fund, including Mark Lyttleton at BlackRock, Paul Casson at Henderson, Tim Steer at Artemis and Julius Lipner at Aviva Investors.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On 8 December, Mirabaud announced the launch in Geneva of a brokerage platform aimed at international institutional clients, Mirabaud Securities LLP – Representative Office Switzerland. It will allow international institutional clients to make stock market transactions on European markets. The platform, which offers “privileged” access to equities, publicly-traded and non-publicly-traded derivatives markets outside Switzerland, depends directly on the London office, Mirabaud Securities LLP, a member of the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The Geneva-based structure has five employees, including Oliver Dufek and Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle, who will join the new firm in first quarter 2011. Mirabaud Securities LLP – Representative Office Switzerland will work in close collaboration with the London office, which will provide order execution for clients. The new entity, which will be overseen by the Swiss (FINMA) and British (FSA) authorities, will be located at 58, rue du Stand in Geneva. In the area of brokerage, Mirabaud assumes the role of agency broker, meaning that we act as an intermediary and advisor without ever investing on our own behalf. We do this in order to offer our clients the best possible execution and to avoid any conflict of interest,” says Antonio Palma, partner and CEO of Mirabaud. The statement also announces that Giles Morland will become a partner at Mirabaud from 1 January 2011. He is currently head of intermediation services for all of Mirabaud.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The European Commission on 8 December announced the launch of a consultation on revisions to the financial market instruments (MiFID) directive, as part of a strategy to create a more transparent and stable financial system. The directive, which has been in force since November 2007, increased competitiveness and integration on the financial markets of the EU, and considerably improved investor protection.However, rapid advances in technology, the complexity and volatility of financial markets, and the lessons of the financial crisis militate for “a profound revision” whenever insufficiencies are observed or improvements are deemed necessary, the Commission says in a statement.The objective of the consultation is to gather contributions from all parties concerned, to inform legislative proposals planned for spring 2011. The deadline has been set for 2 February 2011.

L’indice Hennessee des hedge funds a affiché pour octobre une performance de 0,32 % contre 2,01 % en octobre et 3,71 % en septembre. Depuis le début de l’année, il a gagné 7,12 %.Les meilleurs résultats pour les onze premiers mois de l’année sont enregistré oar la stratégie événementielle (event driven) avec 13,24 %, devant le distressed (10,32 %), l’arbitrage de convertibles (9,01 %) et les marchés émergents (8,62 %). Pour novembre, toutefois l’arbitrage de convertibles et les marchés émergents perdent respectivement 0,93 % et 1,43 %. L'événementiel a perdu pour sa part 0,30 %.